Social Skateboarding with CreamPrime – Interview

CreamGrip - Not just a Grip tape

Skateboarders all around the world know this feeling. New board, new shoes and like a few hours and tricks later the shoes are already pretty much destroyed. The f*cking grip tape again! There is a solution now. Two guys from Spain developed a non-abrasive grip tape called CreamGrip about a year ago. They promise that with CreamGrip your shoes are still in good shape even after a long session on the board.

I talked to them about their company, the grip tape and the special way they are doing their business. Read the full story below.

Hey Segio, Hey Francesc, thanks so much for taking your time for the interview. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and give us a small introduction who you are?

Sure! We are two young entrepreneurs of 22 and 23 years of age and are both from Irun, Spain. We got really frustrated about spending so much money practicing our hobby skateboarding. Like most of the skaters out there we used to spend a lot of money buying brand new shoes that were destroyed in just two weeks due to skating. It was so frustrating that we decided to start a market research about the abrasion of grip tape on shoes. We made tests with different materials and came to the conclusion that the problem weren't the shoes itself, the problem was the grip tape.

And then you decided to create your own grip tape company?

Pretty much! We then started to make tests with different non abrasive materials such as rubber and cork until we finalized the first CreamGrip.

When did you start with the whole project?

We started developing the idea about 2 years ago and jumped into the market on the 20th of November 2017. Until now we are really happy, because we are growing little by little while we are improving the CREAM.

What was the main purpose behind developing that kind of griptape?

We are a skater created and skater managed company and our purpose is to solve skaters problems and make skateboarding for everyone. We want to boost skateboarding through skateboarders. We don't want to become a capitalist company, we want to listen to our clients and grow with them. But finally our purpose is giving people the opportunity of choosing between abrasive grip tape, or non abrasive social grip tape.

What is so special about the griptape?

The main characteristics are:

1. It is non abrasive! So you don't destroy your shoes and clothes and you can even ride it barefoot

2. It is social! For each one you buy another one is donated to a NGO.

3. It is reusable! With the new product that we are going to launch you can take off your cream grip from a broken board and reuse it on a new deck.

4. It is waterproof! So you can clean it easily.

Ok, I got that, but is the CreamGrip as good as "normal" grip tape when it comes to flicking the board and stuff?

We would say that it is even better, but it is different. You have to get used to it. We have some friends that have skated with it and they can't skate with a regular grip anymore. On the other hand there are also people who does not get used to it ever. So it depends on the person. I will definitely encourage people to buy it and if they don't like it,at least they have done something social that empowers skateboarding and education

About the NGO thing. How do you guys came up with the idea of supporting social skateboarding?

When we were making the business model for the whole project we made an analysis about the situation of skateboarding around the world. We realized real quick that not every kid in the world could enjoy the beauty of skateboarding and that there are NGO's out there that are doing a wonderful job supporting skateboarding and supporting these kids. For example SkatePal, Skate-Aid and many more. We wanted to be part of it and support them as much as we can. We are donating a CreamGrip to these NGO's for each one we sell.

What kind of projects do you already support?

We are really happy that we have achieved our first goal of donating CreamGrips to SkatePal. Our next collaborators are Megabi Skate and Skate-Aid. When we collaborate, we set a goal together where we fix the number of kids that are in the NGO, so we can give them the same number of CreamGrips.

What are your goals for the future of your company?

At the moment our goal is to develop and push the CreamGrip more until sandpaper griptape doesn't make sense anymore. Furthermore we are trying to position ourselves as THE non abrasive social grip tape. We know that it is going to be challenging, but if it were easy it will also be boring.

For more information about CreamPrime and their CreamGrip check out their website and social profile on Instagram.